Las Pozas de XilitlaEdward James, Builder of DreamsBorn in 1907 and said to have been the illegitimate child of Kind Edward VII, Edward James was a man obsessed by the surreal - keeping company with such artists and luminaries as Salvador Dalí, Leonora Carrington, René Magritte and Aldous Huxley. Leaving England in 1940 with the intention of making the United States his home, he found himself in 1944 moving instead to the city Cuernavaca, Mexico. There he met Plutarco Gastélum, a yaqui photographer and telegraph operator with whom Edward began traveling the country, discovering during these travels the delights of the waterfalls and pools of the Arroyo de La Conchita near Xilitla. Gastélum was later to become Edward's construction foreman for his monumental, artistic structures in his Enchanted Garden as well as the builder of the house in Xilitla itself in which James lived, now converted into the El Castillo Guest House.
It is said that while bathing in the pools at Las Pozas, Edward saw a cloud of butterflies come down toward him through the canyon, their thickness momentarily cutting off the rays of the sun - Edward saw this incredible spectacle of fluttering wings as a sign that this was to be his home and thereafter set about to transform Las Pozas into his Enchanted Garden. |
